Someday, You Might Like VR Enough To Move In

Will virtual reality equipment ever work well enough to provide us will a viable alternative to real life?

Some people have scoffed at early VR headsets such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear, which are expensive and sometimes make the wearer vomit.

But AMD’s corporate vice president, Roy Taylor, took to the stage at a virtual reality conference being held in Bristol this week to blast any criticism and predict big things for the future.

He said: “To get to photo realism is the next big step, to get to full presence is where we need to get afterwards, when actual life will be indistinguishable from virtual reality.”

That said, there's probably some way to go until we abandon the real world. The software is not quite finished yet, thanks to technical obstacles.

One of my favorite scenes in Stephen Baxter's 2008 novel Flood is one in which a woman chooses to have a child in a virtual reality world, and then doesn't want to leave.

Little Linda, a Headspace baby, was four years old now... The little girl playing on the sunlit patio still made a beautiful image for Maria to gaze upon, in her desktop screen, in her damp, darkened flat.

...Everything Linda knew Maria had taught her. Maria had gloves and a headset, and she would hear the child laugh, fell her when her avatar hugged her, a ghostly presence through the pads on her fingertips. She still couldn't be with the child, not fully...

But that barrier was going to melt away someday soon. The transhumanists had promised...
(Read more about Headspace)